Machine conking out, yes.
No election? No way!
Poll officials are preparing for a worst-case scenario in which 30 percent of the machines to be used in the May 10 automated elections will be hit by hiccups but are confident this will not torpedo the results of the national races.
Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales Tuesday said that Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair Jose Melo had told President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) several months ago that he did not expect a failure of elections.
But the worst-case scenario the Comelec is preparing for is the possibility of a failure of automation “up to 30 percent,” Gonzales recalled Melo telling Ms Arroyo.
In a phone interview, Gonzales said Melo made the statement on questioning by the President.
“Chairman Melo said ‘We are preparing for the worst-case scenario of up to 30-percent failure of automation,’” Gonzales said.
Not enough to disrupt polls
As early as January, Comelec officials had said that the poll body was ready for 30-percent manual polls as a contingency measure.
Comelec officials had told a House oversight committee that they had a contingency plan of using the manual system and that it was geared toward 30 percent of the total number of voters.
The plan called for the Comelec to print manual forms that would be used in case automated machines failed in some precincts.
Gonzales said that the NSC agreed with the Comelec’s assessment.
He said that a 30-percent disruption was “not enough to disrupt the election.”
Security forces
Asked what preparations the defense and military establishments were undertaking in such an event, Gonzales said that they had offered to be at the disposal of the Comelec.
He said Melo had told the NSC that one problem could be coercion of the voters. He added that the police and military had an agreement with the Comelec to deal with intimidation by goons and private armies.
Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in a phone interview that the poll body had printed election returns to cover 30 percent of an anticipated manual voting should the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines break down on May 10.
He said that the Comelec had decided not to print blank ballots, saying that the machine-readable ballots would be used for manual voting.
Jimenez expressed confidence that the failure rate of the PCOS machines would not reach 30 percent but if it did it would not affect the tallies for national races.
“It’s not going to affect the results. We don’t expect the machines to malfunction at the same time. The voting and transmission will still continue,” he said.
BEI to make decision
Jimenez noted that failure of elections in a precinct would only be declared if the PCOS machine and its replacement failed to work in spite of the efforts of technicians on standby.
He added that manual voting would only be recommended by the board of election inspectors (BEI), but protocols for such an event had not been released.
Smartmatic-TIM Corp., the PCOS machine suppliers, will deploy technicians in every precinct to fix or replace machines that do not accept ballots or transmit the results to the canvassing centers.
The company said it could replace a machine within two hours.
Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., co-chair of the joint congressional committee on the automated elections, dismissed the political disaster scenarios as a result of machine glitches.
In an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Locsin said malfunctioning PCOS machines on Election Day did not pose a big threat to the conduct of the elections.
“These are all stand-alone machines. One thing can go wrong with the machine, but that’s it. It can be replaced,” he said.
No power vacuum
Locsin also said a power vacuum in the national posts, especially for president, as a result of transmission failures was far-fetched.
Winners in various national posts can be declared even if the results for the presidential race is contested, solving the issue of succession, Locsin said.
He noted that Comelec’s preparations for the country’s first ever nationwide electronic balloting “seem to be going well.”
The Makati congressman, who is not seeking reelection, said the no-election scenario would only happen “if we are hit by an earthquake.”
No surprise
Vice presidential candidates Loren Legarda, Jay Sonza and Bayani Fernando, who were attending a forum organized by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines Tuesday, were not surprised by official admission of a 30-percent failure of the automation machines.
“So the 30 percent—assuming the Comelec projects that—should be identified now so we are even more vigilant in the 30-percent manual all the way,” said Senator Legarda.
“This is an automated election—automated in a sense that the counting of the ballots is done by machines, but the manner of electing our officers, our leaders is still manual,” Sonza said.
“It doesn’t mean that if there’s manual counting, it means failure of elections already. Let’s not worry because there will still be a hard copy, so we can still count the votes manually,” Fernando said.
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